​Sweden struck by 3rd mosque arson attack in a week

Police car stands in front of a mosque in Uppsala, Sweden, after a burnt-out molotov coctail was found early on January1, 2015. (AFP Photo / TT News Agency / Pontus Lundahl) / AFP

A mosque in one of Sweden’s largest cities was reportedly struck by a Molotov cocktail and vandalized with racist graffiti early on New Year’s morning in the third such attack in a week.

Police are seeking the culprit after a man lobbed the firebomb
into the mosque in the early hours of Thursday morning in
Uppsala. “Someone threw a firebomb, a Molotov cocktail, at
the building,” Uppsala police spokesman Torsten Hemlin told
Swedish news agency TT.

“They also wrote some
vulgar, racist words,”he added.

Nobody was in the
building at the time of the attack, Hemlin said. The attack took
place at about 4:30 am on New Year’s Day.

“The crime has been
classed as attempted arson, vandalism and incitement to
hatred,”police
said in a statement, AFP reported.

Police have been asking
for witnesses to come forward, as a suspect is still at large.
There have been two other arson attacks against mosques in Sweden
during the past week.

On December 25, five
people suffered injuries when a petrol bomb was tossed through
the window of a mosque in Eskilstuna, to the east of
Stockholm.